A Visit to Irion Company Furniture Makers , Fine Woodworking December 1994
Passion for period furniture creates a brotherhood of joiners, By Jonathan Binzen
Irion Company Furniture Makers is 17 going on several hundred. Walk into the shop, and you can feel a direction connection with the roots of American furniture. Patterns, samples, templates and storyboards hanging from the walls and rafters spell out the aesthetic of the 18th century. Half-made highboys, tea tables, secretaries, beds and chairs fill the first floor bench room. The furniture is made with scrupulous fidelity to the originals, and the wood it’s made from is extraordinary. But what’s most striking is the brio with which the furniture is made, the complete immersion of the craftsmen in their work. “Making 18th-century furniture is a real charm. A labor of love,” said Kendl Monn, nine years at Irion. “We’ve been luck-we’ve grown slowly and ended up with the people who really live this stuff.”
Lou Irion founded Irion Company in 1977 after working in his father’s cabinetmaking shop for a year or so. He was soon joined by Chris Arato, a college friend, and together the two built the business over the next 15 years. Arato left in 1992 and opened a small shop of his own in Maine, but he is still a presence at Irion, recalled by everyone I spoke to as a master at the bench and an inspiring mentor. When the two pitched their lots together, neither one had much experience in woodworking or business. “We set out to survive,” Irion said. “There was no grand plan. If we’d had one, we would have failed miserably.” Their survival strategy was to take any work they could get. At the beginning, that meant mostly furniture repair, refinishing and restoration. As the company grew, they built more furniture, but restoration and repair remained the engine of the business.
That was a lucky thing, according to Monn, because in addition to paying the freight, that work also paid the tuition. “Dealers would bring in this great stuff, and everyone would be all over it. We’d see great pieces and great ideas every day, and that’s absolutely the way to learn. You see the real stuff, and you see it the right way – you’re not looking at somebody’s interpretation.”
Perhaps because the company’s founders discovered firsthand that passion and not prior experience was the key to success, they’ve fostered an atmosphere of leaning. Irion has rarely hired fully trained cabinetmakers. “For some reason, we seem to do best with people who learn most of what they know with us,” Irion said. The learning occurs off the job as well as on. If an employee wants to make something for himself, Irion gives him lumber and free run of the shop after hours. A number of Irion employees said that’s how they got from one level to another. “As we see you can do something effectively,” Monn said, “you’ll get to do it for the shop. Then you have to do it cost-effectively, and you get a raise.”
The variety fo work Irion does keeps even the most experienced furnituremakers interested. Different types of furniture are rotated, so everyone gets a shot at the more involved or unusual pieces. Irion explains, “It was obvious early on that you either challenge the guys or you lose them.”
Irion also keeps his furniture makers happy with the outstanding wood he obtains. Even very wide tops and case sides are made from single boards, and grain is always carefully matched. On practically every piece that leaves the shop, the wood’s color is rich and the figure is stunning.
Brian Shultz, an Irion employee for 14 years, still gets excited by the wood. “It felt like Christmas,” he said, when he planed the one-piece mahogany top of the Philadelphia Chippendale hall table in the bottom left photo on p. 83 and revealed the full effect of the crotch figure. “I went and bragged it around the shop.” He stopped carving the volute on one cabriole leg to fetch a rag and some mineral spirits to rub on top, so we could see the feathered depths of the figure. “If I had to glue up four or give boards to make a top for this piece, I might be going through the motions, just getting it out the door. But when you get to work with wood like this, you feel like you’re letting it down if you don’t give it your best.”